What's Inside
Choose the broker for the work you actually need
Do not start with the biggest logo. Start with the retailers, categories, regions, and buyer relationships that matter to your next 12 months. A broker that is impressive in a deck but weak in your category is not a fit.
Ask how the team sells, reports, forecasts, and handles a slow account. You are not only buying introductions. You are buying a repeatable operating motion.
The broker scorecard
Retailer access
Which buyers and accounts do they actively manage in your category? Ask for specifics, not a network claim.
Category fluency
Can they explain your velocity, margin, case pack, promotion, and replenishment constraints without hand-waving?
Operating cadence
What will you receive weekly and monthly? A list of meetings is not the same as a pipeline you can inspect.
Economics
Model commission, retainers, launch fees, travel, samples, promotions, and the internal time required to manage the relationship.
Manage the relationship like a channel
Set targets by account
Agree on priority accounts, buyer meetings, listings, velocity, and timing. Put the targets in a shared tracker.
Review evidence
Ask what happened, what changed, and what happens next. Require retailer feedback and next actions, not activity theater.
Connect sales to operations
The broker needs current inventory, pricing, lead times, case packs, and launch constraints. Bad information creates bad retailer promises.
Decide with a window
Give the relationship a clear review point. Continue when the evidence supports it. Change course when it does not.
When it is time to change brokers
Repeated missed follow-through, vague reporting, retailer promises your operation cannot keep, and no measurable progress are signals. So is a broker who cannot tell you why velocity is weak.
Read the agreement before you act. Confirm notice, account ownership, commissions, and transition obligations. Then protect the retailer relationship with a clean handoff and one source of truth.
Operator rule. Do not fire a broker because you are frustrated. Fire the relationship when the agreed evidence says it is not working.